


This Is Not a Nature Special (but the Nature's Special)

by amusewithaview



Series: Have Daemon, Will Travel [1]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Angst and Humor, Coulson is a BAMF in disguise, Daemons, Gratuitous Mythology References Because That's How I Roll, Trolling, idek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 02:15:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/438024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amusewithaview/pseuds/amusewithaview
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“So, physics,” Darcy says when they leave the office.</p><p>“<i>New Mexico</i>,” Mel counters, equally dubious.</p><p>“<i>Scientists</i>,” she shudders.</p><p>Mel shrugs, a gesture that sits oddly on her heavy shoulders, “Can't be worse than theater majors.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Not a Nature Special (but the Nature's Special)

**Author's Note:**

> Look guys, I am working on other shit and everything and I have six WIPs and _I DON'T KNOW WHAT THIS IS, OKAY?_ I was trying to work on my other Darcy!daemon WIP on here and I was thinking about animals and symbolism and trying to figure out what to give Coulson and then this. _This_ happened.

Darcy is a political science major because _fuck you_ , that's why.

Also, because it is hilarious.

She and Melpomene like to sit in coffee shops and troll the fuck out of the freshmen, out of the young and naïve and the _never seen that before_. Darcy will wear her flutteriest and most wildly colored scarves with a peasant-style blouse and a long, flowing skirt and sit, chewing her lip and reading things like _The Feminine Mystique_ or _The Iliad_ or, on one particularly memorable occasion, _Sex for Dummies_ , with wide eyes and a lost expression.

 _Or_ she'll wear all black, goth up her makeup and sneer at the _overpriced sludge_ while resentfully nursing her _green tea_ and clutching a battered, dime-store copy of _Anna Karenina_ or _Metamorphosis_ or _The Awakening_.

 _Or_ sometimes, when she's feeling particularly mean, she'll wear a pencil skirt and a button-up, stain her lips a dark, cherry red, throw on her horniest horn-rimmed glasses and play the prim, perfect little sexpot librarian. Pencils stabbed through the bun on her head and a chewed-up pen in her mouth _or_ a lollipop _or_ a cigarette.

It always ends the same, no matter the persona. They – man or woman or to-be-determined, Darcy doesn't care – will chat her up, claim interest in what she is doing/thinking/drinking, scoot closer, drawn in by the front she's presenting... and then Melpomene will rise, yawn and stretch and sidle out from behind Darcy, stub tail still as can be, flashing her wide, sharp-toothed grin and laughing, quietly, to herself.

She laughs because it's a joke, the _best_ joke, and she'd rather tell it than hear it, thanks much.

“What are you thinking about doing after you graduate?” her advisor asks, never taking his eyes off of his computer. He doesn't look at them, never looks at them. His tapir daemon sits behind the desk whenever they're in the office, even though she's got a low, cushioned chair next to her human's, one that's obviously well-used, judging by the wear and tear on the fabric.

“I'm thinking about looking into law,” she says, seriously. She may smile, but she never jokes.

He blinks at his computer, flinches a little when Melpomene snorts, and almost says _something_ , but then he ducks his head, hunching his shoulders, and it's gone again. “You still haven't finished your science requirements,” he says, and she wonders if he's even listening to her. It's not like he can hear anything, what with the way his ears are practically covered by his shoulders at this point.

As if he's expecting an attack. As if he thinks she'd go for the throat.

“Too obvious,” Melpomene mutters, and Darcy smirks because they're nothing if not unexpected.

“So, physics,” she says when they leave the office twenty minutes and one stuttering conversation later.

“ _New Mexico_ ,” Mel counters, equally dubious.

“Scientists,” Darcy shudders.

Mel shrugs, a gesture that sits oddly on her heavy shoulders, “Can't be worse than theater majors.”

Jane is adorable and ridiculously full of energy. Her Orion is just as active, spinning out complex designs in every corner that he can. Darcy avoids any and all _Charlotte's Web_ references out of respect for the woman and her unintentional, oblivious kindness. Erik still jumps whenever he really _looks_ at them together, and sometimes Daphne stares at them, big brown eyes searching for something that she never seems to find.

Melpomene takes to yawning, loudly and ostentatiously, in their direction whenever possible.

Things are, if not good, then at least tolerable, with them.

“I may have chosen the wrong crowd, I mean, scientists aren't _so_ bad,” Darcy postulates, staring up at the night sky.

“We are as and what we should be,” Mel says repressively, staring at the small fire they've built on the roof.

“I wouldn't change you,” Darcy says. It's not a reassurance, it's a fact.

“You couldn't if you wanted to.”

Days pass, deities fall, and their world is rocked by chance and wracked with change.

“ _Dude_ ,” Darcy says, stopping short while they sort out their newly-returned equipment. She's got another week before she's done, finished can go back and sit a few tests and _gradu-fucking-ate_. She's going to spend the week with them, helping sort, and then the weekend will be drunk, and then next week she'll sit and think about what the hell she's going to do with the rest of her life.

“Yes?” Jane inquires, absently. Everything she does is absent _something_. It would be annoying, save for the constantly absent _disdain_ or _distrust_ or _fear_ or _suspicion_. As the weeks have passed, they have come to revel in her and Orion's scattered attention, quietly, because they don't want her to notice. Erik may have, his looks have tapered off, even Daphne has stopped stepping feather-light around them. Though the distraction that _Norse gods_ and _mass destruction_ and _new science!_ holds might also have something to do with it.

“Dude,” Darcy repeats, because the moment calls for it, “I tased a _god_.”

Jane gives that the thought it requires. “And,” she says after a moment, “we also hit him with my van.”

Darcy offers a fist, the physicist stares at it for a moment before bumping back (gently).

“Best summer course _ever_.”

Of course, it's not just a summer course. She didn't know why she thought they'd just... let her go.

The Man In Black has an appropriately anonymous-looking daemon: a sleek sandy-brown dog that makes something in the back of Darcy's brain itch just a bit, but she's preoccupied by the form(s) he's pushing her way and the many _other_ Men In Black (less impressive black) who are swiftly packing her dorm room into several handy boxes.

“We were waiting for you to graduate,” he informs her, “before we gave you the spiel.”

“The spiel?” she asks, and her voice is not weak, no, that's _distraction_.

“Come with us if you want to live?” Mel asks, voice husky and, for once, not accompanied by a chuckle.

“Something like that. You've seen quite a bit, Ms. Lewis -”

“Too much?”

He smiles, “Somewhere between that and 'not enough'. We have a need for people like you.”

She frowns at him, and at his daemon, standing so quietly by his side. She stares at the dog, then looks harder, ignoring the impropriety because there is something – something scratching at the back of her brain – and then her eyes go wide and Mel lets out a short, _loud_ bark of genuine laughter because his daemon is... his daemon is...

“We can't all be as obvious as the spots on a hyena,” the dingo daemon says, and Darcy knows, somehow, that the look on her canine face is a smiling one, “but there's a place in SHIELD for women with more bite than bark, and more bark than most.”

Darcy signs the papers then and there, and Melpomene laughs and laughs and _laughs_ because it's funny, all right?

Not everyone will get the joke, but they do.

They always have.

**Author's Note:**

> So, yeah, Darcy's daemon is a hyena and hyenas have a whole fuckton of bad publicity and on top of _that_ her daemon is the same gender as she is (and hyenas are matriarchal, so there's _that_ , too) and Darcy has Issues.
> 
> Fun nature facts:  
> 1\. hyenas have one of the strongest bites in the animal world (measured in pounds per square inch).  
> 2\. dingos are NOT in ANY way _dogs_.  
>   
> 
>  
> 
> Also, because I couldn't work it into the fic: _MAYBE THE DINGO ATE YOUR BABY, CLINT._


End file.
